The SAP S/4 HANA is an innovative ERP solution that has been the current trend of businesses across extended geographies. Developed for industries with at least 1,500 employees that wish to run a two-tier ERP system, SAP S/4 HANAprovides a very efficient Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) along with other core properties. It puts together parts from different industries, to incorporate it with SAP Business Suite products.
Today, SAP S/4HANA recalls itself as one of the largest enterprise solution suites globally. The suite of application comes with modern and future-ready architecture with easy deployability. This article focuses on the roadmap on how SAP S/4 HANA is on its way to becoming the future of smart ERP. Let’s get started!
Genesis of SAP HANA and SAP S/4 HANA Platform:
SAP HANA platform was first made available for the masses in 2010. Other platforms like SAP ERP and Business Suite are made to work, based on SAP HANA in-memory database and some other supported platforms. While the SAP S/4 HANA was firstly introduced on 3rd February 2015 at the New York Stock Exchange, the cloud variant was launched on 6th May 2015 in Orlando, Florida, at SAP’s annual customer conference.
Market Capture Since its Launch:
Although the initial adoption rate was considerably low due to the questions raised on its pricing and accessibility, SAP S/4 HANA had over 8,900 customers by July of 2018. Some of the SAP HANA platform’s competitors are Oracle, Microsoft, Infor, and Workday, Inc., which provide similar ERP services. The SAP Company provides SAP S/4 HANA Cloud in 18 different languages and 33 different country versions, thus targeting diverse customers.
What makes SAP S/4 HANA Different?
SAP S/4 HANA claims to be a future-proof system equipped with intelligent technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that promises to offer real-time computation and advanced level analytics. This ensures a better workflow and helps companies to have a competitive edge over others. Flexible deployment options and 100 times faster reporting helps in reducing errors and improves productivity.
The HANA-based in-memory database confirms at least a 50% reduction in data footprint.
SAP S/4 HANA provides a very high level of data protection. It follows industry and country-specific data privacy and safety standards. Business data is stored with well-defined data security management policies in data centers. Customers can share physical hardware, but data cannot be shared in a similar fashion. A strict authentication process is used before allowing the user to access any data.
Extensive Uses of SAP S/4 HANA is Different Industrial Sectors:
- Finance –
- Automation in sales ensures fraud detection at multiple levels, which in turn helps to gain the trust of stakeholders.
- A large percentage of senior finance executives believe that the time saved by making the sales process completely automated so that it can be used to train new employees and improve efficiency drastically.
- Reducing the effort in managing a manual ledger and periodic monitoring of tax and audit processes by making a centralized tax and legal reports monitoring system.
- Supply Chain –
- Seemingly unlimited simultaneous movement of material is possible due to live inventory management systems.
- Planning and scheduling of goods in transit are more efficient due to early visibility into stock transports.
- Automation, optimization, and all other operations are performed in a single warehouse platform.
- Manufacturing –
- Load distributions and real-time adjustments can be made due to available information about the work center.
- Users are able to respond to demands and confirmed order changes.
- The quick accomplishment of custom orders while reducing inventory and waste by active collaboration with the Original Equipment Manufacturers.
- Large-scale production of personalized parts can be ensured without human interaction.
- Research & Development-
- Running practical and on-budget projects is easier than ever due to financial and logistic controls.
- Resource management is more efficient for single projects.
- Safe handling of goods is obtained by product compliance and dangerous goods maintenance.
- Helps in product lifecycle management.
- Sales –
- Sales optimization using SAP S/4 HANA is very efficient due to its customer relationship management and service order management.
- Customer satisfaction is improved through real-time inventory information.
- Lean process with fewer business documents and overall simplification achieved by one single device.
- Procurement –
- Items that cannot be cleared automatically are cleared through automated payables matching.
- Flexibility and visibility across an organization are maintained by centralized purchasing.
- Matching groups of material for free text items and contract creation for materials without using an existing contract are done via automatic recommendations.
- Embedded ML-based analytics are used to predict contract consumption for improved negotiations.
- Asset Management –
- Comprehensive management of health, environmental, and safety data, including response and analysis.
- Optimized resource allocation by integrated scheduling.
How Can Customers Use SAP S/4 HANA?
- For users that are changing from non-SAP-based platforms or an earlier SAP ERP to SAP S/4 HANA platform, then the transactional information is transferred from the earlier system.
- For complete replacement of existing SAP Suite system to SAP S/4 HANA is based on Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO) if the customer is not already on an SAP HANA in-memory based system.
Life-Cycle of the ERP:
SAP S/4 HANA can be implemented on the industry premises, or it can be cloud-based or a hybrid. The cloud-integrated database management support is what SAP boasts the most about its latest ERP platform. With different SAP consulting companies coming together, emerging the future of SAP.
The product life cycle for the SAP S/4 HANA cloud edition is around three months, and the on-premise version gets a new release every year along with added rectifications in the form of Feature Pack Stacks (FPs) or Service Pack Stacks (SPSs) every three months. For on-premise installations, SAP is supplying new products every year along with three FPS every quarter. SPS is similar to FPS, but it might include some additional features like non-disruptive and non-mandatory features. #KhabarLive #hydnews
